379. For our knowledge of the means of traveling employed by the Romans we have to rely upon indirect sources (§ 12), because, if any books of travel were written by Romans they have not come down to us. We know, however, that while no distance was too great to be traversed, no hardships too severe to be surmounted, the Roman in general cared little for travel in itself, for the mere pleasure, that is, of sight-seeing as we enjoy it now. This was partly due to his blindness to the charms of nature in its wilder aspects, more perhaps to the feeling that to be out of Rome was to be forgotten. He made once in his life the grand tour (§ 116), when he visited famous cities and strange or historic sites; he spent a year abroad, in the train of some general or governor (§ 117), but, this done, only the most urgent private affairs or public duties could draw him from Italy. And Italy meant to him only Rome and his country estates (§ 145). These he visited when the hot months had closed the courts and adjourned the senate; he roamed restlessly from one estate to another, enjoying the beauty of the Italian landscape, but impatient for his real life to begin again. Even when public or private business called him from Rome, he kept in touch with affairs by correspondence; he expected his friends to write him voluminous letters, and was ready himself to return the favor when positions should be reversed. So, too, the proconsul kept as near to Rome as the boundaries of his province would permit.

385. The Roads. The engineering skill of the Romans and the lavish outlay of money made their roads the best that the world has known until very recent times (§ 386). They were strictly military works, built for strategic purposes, intended to facilitate the dispatching of supplies to the frontier and the massing of troops in the shortest possible time. Beginning with the first important acquisition of territory in Italy (the Via Appia was built in 312 B.C.) they kept pace with the expansion of the Republic and the Empire, so that a great network of roads covered the Roman world, all indeed leading to Rome, as the proverb has it. In Britain, for instance, the roads, some of which are still in use, converged at Londinium (London). They ran as far north as the wall of Antoninus Pius, and out to points on the coast. After crossing the Channel one found the highway again as it may still be traced, running down through Gaul and on to Rome. In the fourth century of our era nineteen great roads, it is said, went out from Rome through the fifteen gates of the Wall of Aurelian. In Italy roads were built at the cost of the State; in the provinces the conquered communities bore the expense of construction and maintenance, but the work was done under the direction of Roman engineers, and often by the legions between campaigns. Roads ran in lines as straight as possible between the towns they were to connect, with frequent crossroads and branch roads only less carefully constructed. The grade was always easy, because hills were cut through, gorges and rivers were crossed on arches of solid stone, and valleys and marshes were spanned by viaducts of the same material.

387. Construction. Our knowledge of the construction of the military roads is derived from a treatise of Vitruvius on pavements and from existing remains of the roads themselves. The Latin phrase for building a road, mūnīre viam, epitomizes the process exactly, for mūnīre means “to build a wall” (moenia); and throughout its full length, whether carried above the level of the surrounding country (Fig. 252) or in a cut below it, the road was a solid wall averaging fifteen feet in width and perhaps three feet in height. The method followed will be easily understood from Figure 253. A cut (fossa) was first made of the width of the intended road and of a depth sufficient to hold the filling, which varied with the nature of the soil. The earth at the bottom of the cut (E) was leveled and made solid with heavy rammers (§ 213). Upon this was spread the statūmen (D), a foundation course of stones not too large to be held in the hand; the thickness of the layer varied with the porosity of the soil. Over this came the rūdus (C), a nine inch layer of coarse concrete or rubble (§ 210) made of broken stones and lime. Over this was laid the nucleus (B), a six-inch bedding of fine concrete made of broken potsherds and lime, in which was set the final course (A) of blocks of lava or of other hard stone furnished by the adjacent country. This last course (dorsum) made the roadway (agger viae) and was laid with the greatest care so as to leave no seams or fissures to admit water or to jar the wheels of vehicles. In the diagram the stones are represented with the lower surface flat, but they were commonly cut to a point or edge, as in Figure 252, in order to be held more firmly by the nucleus. The agger was bounded on the sides by umbōnēs (G, G), curbstones beyond which lay the footpaths (F, F), sēmitae or marginēs. On a subsoil of rocky character the foundation course or even the first and second courses might be unnecessary. On the less traveled branch roads the agger seems to have consisted of a thick course of gravel (glārea), well rounded and compacted, instead of the blocks of stone, and the crossroads may have been of still cheaper materials.

389. Speed. The lack of public conveyances running on regular schedules (§ 380) makes it impossible to tell the speed ordinarily made by travelers. Speed depended upon the total distance to be covered, the degree of comfort demanded by the traveler, the urgency of his business, and the facilities at his command. Cicero speaks of fifty-six miles in ten hours by cart (§ 384) as something unusual, but on Roman roads it ought to have been possible to go much faster, if fresh horses were provided at the proper distances, and if the traveler could stand the fatigue. The sending of letters gives the best standard of comparison. There was no public postal service, but every Roman of position had among his slaves special messengers (tabellāriī), whose business it was to deliver important letters for him. They covered from twenty-six to twenty-seven miles on foot in a day, and from forty to fifty in carts. We know that letters were sent from Rome to Brundisium, 370 miles, in six days, and on to Athens in fifteen more. A letter from Sicily would read Rome on the seventh day, from Africa on the twenty-first day, from Britain on the thirty-third day, and from Syria on the fiftieth day. In the time of Washington it was no unusual thing for a letter to take a month to go from the eastern to the southern states in winter.

392. Sealing and Opening of Letters. For sealing the letter, thread (līnum), wax (cēra), and a seal (signum) were necessary. The seal (§ 255) not only secured the letter against improper inspection, but also attested the genuineness of those written by the librāriī; autograph signatures seem not to have been thought of. The tablets were put together face to face with the writing on the inside, and the thread was passed around them and through small holes bored through them, and was then securely tied. Upon the knot softened wax was dropped and to this the seal was applied. Letters written on sheets of papyrus (schedae) were rolled longitudinally and then secured in the same way. On the outside was written the name of the person addressed, with, perhaps, the place where he was to be found, if the letter was not sent by a special messenger. When the letter was opened, care was taken not to break the seal; the cutting of the thread gave access to the contents. If the letter was preserved, the seal was kept attached to it in order to attest its authenticity. In the fifth chapter of the Third Oration against CatilineCicero describes the opening of a letter.

394. Manufacture of Papyrus. The papyrus reed (Fig. 261) had a triangular stem which reached a maximum height of perhaps fourteen feet with a thickness of four or five inches. The stem contained a pith of which the paper made by a process substantially as follows. The stem was cut crosswise, and the rind removed. The pith was cut into thin lengthwise strips as evenly as possible. The first seems to have been made from one of the angles to the middle of the opposite side, and the others parallel with it to the right and to the left. The strips were then assorted according to width, and enough of them were arranged side by side as closely as possible upon a board to make their combined width almost equal to the length of the single strip. Across these was laid another layer at right angles, with perhaps a coating of glue or paste between them. The mat-like sheet that resulted was then soaked in water and pressed or hammered into a substance not unlike our paper, called by the Romans, charta. After the sheets (schedae) had been dried and bleached in the sun, they were freed of rough places by scraping and trimmed into uniform sizes, depending upon the length of the strips of pith. The fewer the strips that composed each sheet, or in other words the greater the width of each strip, the closer the texture of the charta and the better its quality. It was possible, therefore, to grade the paper by its size, and the width of the sheet rather than its height was taken as the standard. The best quality was sold in sheets about ten inches wide; the poorest that could be used to write upon came in sheets about six inches wide. The height in each case was perhaps one inch to two inches greater. It has been calculated that a single papyrus plant would make about twenty sheets, and this number seems to have been made the commercial unit of measure (scāpus) by which the paper was sold, a unit corresponding roughly to our quire.

400. Commercial Publication. The publication of books at Rome as a business began in the time of Cicero. There was no copyright law and no protection therefore for author or publisher. The author’s pecuniary returns came in the form of gifts or grants from those whose favor he had won by his genius; the publisher depended, in the case of new books, upon meeting the demand before his rivals could market their editions, and, in the case of standard books, upon the accuracy, elegance, and cheapness of his copies. The process of commercial publication was essentially the same as the method already described, except that larger numbers of librāriī would be employed. The publisher would estimate as closely as possible the demand for any new work that he had secured, would put as large a number of scribes upon it as possible, and would take care that no copies should leave his establishment until his whole edition was ready. After the copies were once on sale, they could be reproduced by anyone. The best houses took all possible pains to have their books free from errors; they had competent correctors to read them copy by copy, but in spite of their efforts blunders were legion. Authors sometimes corrected with their own hands the copies intended for their friends. In the case of standard works purchasers often hired scholars of reputation to revise their copies for them, and copies of known excellence were borrowed or hired at high prices for the purpose of comparison.

401. Rapidity and Cost of Publication. Cicero tells us of Roman senators who wrote fast enough to take evidence verbatim, and the trained scribes must have far surpassed them in speed. Martial tells us that his second book could be copied in an hour. It contains five hundred and forty verses, which would make the scribe equal to nine verses to the minute. It is evident that a small edition, consisting of copies not more than twice or three times as numerous as the scribes, could be put upon the market more quickly than it could be produced now. The cost of the books varied, of course, with their size and the style of their mounting. Martial’s first book, containing eight hundred twenty lines and covering thirty-nine pages in Teubner’s text, sold at thirty cents, fifty cents, and one dollar; his Xenia, containing two hundred and seventy-four verses and covering fourteen pages in Teubner’s text, sold at twenty cents, but cost the publisher less than ten. Such prices would hardly be considered excessive now. Much would depend upon the reputation of the author and the consequent demand. High prices were put on certain books. Autograph copiesGellius (late in the second century, A.D.) says that one by Vergil cost the owner one hundred dollarsand copies whose correctness was vouched for by some recognized authority commanded extraordinary prices.

402. Libraries. The gathering of books in large private collections began to be general only toward the end of the Republic. Cicero had considerable libraries not only in his house at Rome, but also at his countryseats. Probably the bringing to Rome of whole libraries from the East and Greece by Lucullus and Sulla started the fashion of collecting books; at any rate collections were made by many persons who knew and cared nothing about the contents of the rolls, and every town house had its library (§ 206) lined with volumes. In these libraries were often displayed busts of great writers and statues of the Muses. Public libraries date from the time of Augustus. The first to be opened in Rome was founded by Asinius Pollio (died 4 A.D.), and was housed in the Ātrium Lībertātis. Augustus himself founded two others, and the number was brought up to twenty-eight by his successors. The most magnificent of these was the Bibliothēca Ulpia, founded by Trajan. Smaller cities had their libraries, too, and even the little town of Comum boasted one founded by Pliny the Younger and supported by an endowment that produced thirty thousand sesterces annually. The public baths often had libraries and reading-rooms attached to them (§ 365).